Reply to D.C. needs to get a lot more car friendly

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Given that a few thousand businesses have left downtown D.C. over the past two years, you would think that the city would be exploring ways to encourage more people to return and spend their money.

It may pain some District residents to hear this, but the city needs the suburbs. At this point, making the city less accessible by car will only hurt the District and strengthen the cycle of economic disinvestment and rising crime.[/quote]

public transport must be improved, not private transport, which makes the city a terrible place. And as everybody knows: a lot of busniesses had to close in the last two years beacuse of the pandemic. Bikers and pedestrians are not the cause.[/quote]

WMATA is broken. Systemic incompetence combined with a lack of meaningful political will to fix it means we’re years away from potentially having a well-managed public transportation network in the region. Downtown D.C. can’t wait years.

Of course the pandemic caused the mass closure of businesses downtown. But pedestrians and cyclists aren’t enough to re-invest in the area; the city desperately needs the suburbs as well.[/quote]

Traffic will not return to the same levels post-pandemic because of WFH. That’s why all this grousing about being “car friendly” is so off key. There’s so little traffic that people are driving much more recklessly. DC is going to have to figure out how to replace the lost tax revenue, and making the city even more hostile to walkers is not it. [/quote]

Traffic downtown now exceeds pre-pandemic levels.

https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2022/05/25/dc-pandemic-rush-hour-traffic[/quote]

Not to point out the obvious but the city has spend billions of dollars on bike lanes that barely anyone even uses. There are bike lanes that I have *never* seen anyone use. [/quote]

billions? ok. [/quote]

You're right.  We shouldn't exaggerate.  Especially when there's no need to.  Hundreds of millions is still absurd.  What makes it worse is that the money is all taken from transportation funding because of maybe one hundred commuter cyclists.  Biking is a great recreational activity but it is not transportation.  Biking enhancements should be funded through DPR not DDOT.[/quote]

You are still exaggerating - in the current FY the budget for Pedestrian and bike lanes in DC is 2 million.  Out of a 670 million dollar DDOT budget almost all of which is going to street re-paving.

And what a stupid and ignorant thing to say that biking is not transportation - it is in DC and every other country in the world.[/quote]

yeah bike lanes are basically paint and flexiposts. a few concrete curbs if more protected.  bus lanes are paint and a few bump-outs. the most expensive traffic calming seems to be those sidewalk extension bump-outs. but it’s absolutely absurd to claim the DDOT budget caters to bikes …[/quote]

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